Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is one of the greatest games to bless the RPG genre. Hot take I know, but seriously, this game succeeds in every goal it strived to achieve. It blows away its predecessor in terms of scope, mechanics, and general refining of the formula to make for an overall more wholistic and ambitious outing than the original. The textbook example of the perfect sequel if there ever was one. An often-overlooked quality in this game's favor is that it is also one of the most accessible RPG entries due to a timeless and endearing art style, one of the greatest battle systems ever featured in an RPG due to its simplicity and surprising amount of depth, and that ever ubiquitous Mario name associated with it. Anyone could absolutely enjoy this game from RPG newbie, skeptic, or enthusiast alike. The story is somehow as simplistic as it needs to be, yet it takes you in so many directions and set pieces that it is anything but being the only Mario game to feature a championship wrestling league and the first to put him on the moon on the way to collect the crystal stars and open the fabled Thousand-Year Door. To aid you in your journey you befriend partners that tag along and battle at your side till the bitter end. These partners actually feel like members of your group and fleshed out characters rather than just extensions of your overworld or combat capabilities. The combat shares the same basic blueprint as the original such as jump, hammer, partners, flower point (essentially mana) centric ability casting, Star Points (exp points), the badge system, guarding, defending, and fleeing in a turn-based format all return, but so many more mechanics were thrown in or improved upon that it is its own entirely unique beast. The game one-upped the storybook chapter-based style of the original by having you actually fighting on a stage complete with stage effects in front of a live audience to see the carnage and can toss items which you can also to them to charge your meter necessary to cast your powers granted by the crystal stars. Despite being turn-based, one thing you are never doing in this game is twiddling your thumbs waiting for "your turn to play" as you can interact with your opponent even during their turns through snappy inputs from guarding or the newly introduced superguard or through clever strategies afforded through badges and abilities. The only common critique lobbied at this game is it does have a bit of backtracking, but I feel it gets massively blown out of proportion to overcorrect for how little else problems people have with the game. Even at its most blatant instances being the layout of the forest outside Twilight Town and the search for General White feel like a nitpicks worth of a speedbump in an otherwise smooth ride to more interesting dialogue opportunities and set pieces in one of the most vibrant and unique worlds ever featured in a video game. Instead of languishing that Nintendo may never make that return to form entry in the series, we can just all just be happy in the fact that they already came about as close to perfection with that formula in this gem of a game.
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